Somehow, somewhere lay The Way. She must never fall lower; never be
utterly despicable in the eyes of the man she had loved. There was no
dream of forgiveness, of purification, of re-kindled love; all these she
placed sadly and gently into the dead past. But in awful earnestness,
she turned toward the future; struggling blindly, groping in half formed
plans for a way.
She came thus into the room where sat Miss Smith, strangely pallid
beneath her dusky skin. But there lay a light in her eyes.
_Eighteen_
THE COTTON CORNER
All over the land the cotton had foamed in great white flakes under the
winter sun. The Silver Fleece lay like a mighty mantle across the earth.
Black men and mules had staggered beneath its burden, while deep songs
welled in the hearts of men; for the Fleece was goodly and gleaming and
soft, and men dreamed of the gold it would buy. All the roads in the
country had been lined with wagons--a million wagons speeding to and fro
with straining mules and laughing black men, bearing bubbling masses of
piled white Fleece. The gins were still roaring and spitting flames and
smoke--fifty thousand of them in town and vale. Then hoarse iron throats
were filled with fifteen billion pounds of white-fleeced, black-specked
cotton, for the whirling saws to tear out the seed and fling five
thousand million pounds of the silken fibre to the press.
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